al-aQra3 adventures : Hajj (continued)

Chapter 4

Who sneaked out God’s “Credit” (or Blessing) list? Have you ever heard something like “If you pray on that day, your prayer blessing will equal that of 100 prayers on any other day”? First of all, when did we worshippers decide to bargain with God? I mean lets say, for example, a prayer on Friday afternoon would have 10 blessings. When did we just go “Aaaaiiiihhh… Naaaah, that’s just not cutting it for us… God…. We need more blessing to keep it interesting”? “A prayer in that mosque would equal an Omra (a smaller version of Hajj) with the Prophet”. If you pray on that spot then stand on your head and turn 360 degrees, you’ll get 70 blessings. What is this indulgence? When did we lose sight of what we actually are supposed to do? A prayer is a prayer. It will be good for us today, and would be good for us tomorrow. It will be blessed tonight, and it would be bless a year from now. We will benefit from it if we’re in Kuwait, and we would benefit from it if we’re in Mozambique.

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Chapter 5

Ummm… Yeah… About this chapter… Well it’s not happening. Upper management put the kibosh on it.

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Chapter 6

Comparing Hajj with what it used to be back then (as far as my imagination would permit me) I seriously believe that we have it worse off. I don’t think they had the poisonous smell of diesel filling their lungs to the brim. I don’t think the mass crowd that trails off all kinds of litter and garbage (human waste as well) all over the place were a problem back then. I don’t think terrible road infrastructure, narrow roads handling the traffic of 2 million people by foot, were a problem back then… etc. etc. etc… Come to think of it, I don’t think they had “etc.” back then either.

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Chapter 7

What’s with the anger, people!!?
Calm down, c a l m… d o w n…
I’m not kidding when I say that people there are nothing short of being comically contradicting. One moment they are asking forgiveness, “O’ God forgive me (the weeping usually starts here), please admit me into your grace, into your mercy. I pray for all my loved ones—“ then you see something only seen in Superman comic books. BAAAM!!! BOOOM!!! SMAAACK!!! The guy is fisting and elbowing his way through an equally barbaric current of people. And of course, to every action, there is a reaction, a huge knuckle-buckle, kick-o-rama… which does lead to a few purple bruises and sore spots… even death.

As I was doing my pilgrimage chores (milestones), I promised myself to be a practicing peaceful Muslim (that’s what it literally means… Muslim) until that is, I got brutally attacked by a 70 year old 4 foot 5 inches Indonesian woman, who gave me a smirk kind of look, a look that can only be interpreted as “Hey… if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the $!@#! kitchen”… That was it for me! That was war! A few moments later I was awakened from that trance by the cries of another woman, a victim of my war-like, barbaric behavior… From that moment on, I chose to be the punching bag rather than the boxer on the ring.

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Chapter 8

The Throwing Stones at the Devil chore (from now on TSD for abbreviation) is a hoot! I’m sure the Devil was there, by choice mind you, just to laugh at the insanities of what people shout as they are throwing the stones. I’m sure Satan was there saying “yeah right, it was me not the 34 C’s on your neighbor that was the reason behind your affair”. When will we stop projecting the devil inside us onto the Devil? When will be claim responsibility for all the rotten things we do?

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Chapter 9

Instead of writing a paragraph here, I’ll just raise a question and leave it open.

Should Hajj be taken literally or figuratively?


yours,
al-aQra3